More tips from Sonia Thompson
Video transcript
okay so yes what about tip number four please okay tip number four links to tip number three go out and visit other schools see what they do the amount of times we work with schools as a research school um and also when we were a teaching school and school they would come to set masses and they said oh it’s so great to be out of our school building and seeing what others do and i’m not advocating that you go to other schools to copy what they do but what it does provide is just a wider lens and that is so crucial as educators we need a wider lens and we need to not be insular when you’re insula you lose momentum you lose the focus of what is happening now and often schools can get into a little you get into a silo don’t you um and you’re just regurgitating things that work for you but this could be something better yeah and that’s what we always need to remember it’s not that things don’t work for us but there could be something better out there that we can start to think about and contextualize for ourselves we’re not going to pick up and lift what that other school is doing but we’re going to start thinking about it and it may be something that we can add in something we can you know manipulate that works for us so it really is about not being too on track um but having that wider lens on education and i think going through the schools is great this is fantastic i have loads to ask you on this because i i for first off i fully agree with you i think yeah i’ve had the the slight disclaimer that i think as we talked about before make sure you’ve seen the good stuff within your own school because you know because often as we’ve said you can go out looking for the great stuff and it’s it’s in you know yeah it’s right there yeah definitely but now i have loads of things to ask you about this so first if um what about the logistics if somebody contacts you and says i want to visit say matthews obviously you know you can say oh yeah of course come in and they can have a chat to you and so but what they really want to see is what’s going on in lessons and so on so how do you kind of sell that to the staff because a lot of staff are quite intimidated when they’re you know being observed and particularly if they’re almost being held up as you know come come in and come and i think i think a it is about being honest with other people who are coming in to see what you do because i think as schools we have to be clear that this is what we do and what we do is based on our context for our children based on what our children need so what you’ll see is where we’ve used research we’ve made sure that we’ve contextualized that we know what works and then we’re working in that middle place um hopefully that sweet spot for us so what you’re seeing is what we do our teachers i think we’ve i think we’ve come to a place now where when we have visitors coming we are very honest we say to our visitors you’re going to see this you’re going to see that you might don’t go in there don’t go in there we’re not letting you in that room just be honest be honest show them where where you found the good practice don’t just open the school out because if there’s teachers who are not comfortable then there’s no point there’s no purpose it doesn’t help anybody so even if it’s about a couple of classrooms that you’re showing them and you’re talking it through so we do a kind of three-fold morning we talk about our context we talk about what works for us we show classrooms but we say don’t go in there don’t go in there don’t go in there we bring our subject leaders in to talk about books and talk about what we do and then they um people who come in can ask questions so be really clear about what you are don’t just have people come in and there’s not a clear program of what you’re going to do with them it’s not just a free-for-all go anywhere because you often need people to narrate what they’re seeing yes you need people to signpost them to what is the good practice that they’re looking for often people can come in and not see what they want to see because they just don’t see it they just don’t get it so you do need some narration of that so be really clear give as many signposts as possible yeah and do you find it tends to be kind of one-way traffic in the sense that people want to come to see your school or do you have kind of reciprocal arrangements where your colleagues can get out to other schools because that’s often kind of the disadvantage of being in a school that’s doing well is that people want to see you but you don’t get that chance to go out and see other things how does that work well we’re out all we are out out and about all the time i think that’s i for me that is one of the things that moved us forward in that we were able to go to others and we were very deliberate about researching schools finding out about the similarities in terms of context at the area where the school was the children the kind of population that they served and went to see what they did and i think again you’ve got to just be really clear about what you’re going for what you want to pick up what you can leave behind and what you can then move forward and it’s sometimes it’s not going to be everything it’s not going to be anything but you know it’s about giving people a chance to just see um and i’ve seen people just come back so infused they either say gosh this is really great to be at saint matthews although actually there’s some great things that we can learn and move forward here as well and i think one of the great things about our senior leaders here is that they do get a chance to go out and talk to every people about what they see and we’ve changed and aligned and manipulated got rid of things because of what we’ve heard but you’ve got to be really clear about that pathway yeah this is this is fantastic just two more questions on this we’ll speak to you about this all day and if we’ve got a teacher listening here who thinks you know what i really want to go out and visit a school now and if they have the email address of the head teacher or senior leader or whatever what would you be looking for in an email that would make you think yeah i want this person to kind of come around my school because i can imagine some you know you can get an email saying i want to come in and you’re like well yeah what what kind of things do people need to be saying what what the genuine reasons that you you know for wanting to come in if that makes sense i think for me you always you all you’re always suspicious when people just say we want to come and visit yeah and you’re waiting for that you’re scrolling down to see the rest of it but there’s nothing there we we will if people come to us because they heard about that they it’s either reading or it’s curriculum or it’s behaviors or it’s culture if people are specific because you can’t do everything so if a school’s already thought we need we’re looking at that we can get some support with that particular thing i always worry when people say we want to see five different things on we’ve only got a morning you can’t see five things so it is about being really clear if you want to visit another school be clear about what and it makes it easier for that school as well to kind of tailor and and and and organize the the morning so or whenever the time is for you to be able to do that yeah that’s great right i’ve got one more question directly related to this but then a bonus question if that’s okay my question directly related is um is there any benefit do you think of primary teachers visiting secondary schools and secondary teachers visiting prime schools and is this something you’ve experienced i i i again i think it’s absolutely crucial for transition um just for for both sides to really understand primary and secretary to understand each other or what we do um i think people will be surprised at just how how confident primary pupils are in their absolutely in their space um when they’re learning the level of independence and i think there is there is a scariness for children there is a kind of falling off when they go to secondary school and they become the smallest in this big the small fish in the big pond um so it is really useful for teachers to kind of get that sense but i think on the other side it’s also really important for primary pupils to know particularly for their feeder schools what is it that you would like us to focus on what would you what would you like us to get your children ready for our children ready for um because often we don’t know we don’t know what that the view from the other side is so i just think there’s a there’s a brilliant opportunity for that two-way um collaboration um that’s fantastic you’ve answered my bonus question because i was interested in what makes successful transition and again i’ve done it all wrong in the past where it’s been very much the primary kids come to the secondary school we teach them a kind of secondary school maths lesson probably thinking we’ve done all this in years yeah but yeah but any time i’ve been lucky enough to visit primary college i’ve i’m always blown away by the depth of math follow-up question this could be the worst question i’ve asked you all well justin i mean it’s terrible but just in general do you think there’s anything that primary school teachers can learn from secondary and secondary can learn from primary just like as a general couple of things that you think secondary teachers do that actually quite well we could we could learn from that and vice versa or do you think is that too general to kind of pick up on anything i think i think because i am such an advocate for reading for pleasure i i and i know that much more primary secondary schools are creating this kind of really strong pathway for reading for pleasure within their schools i think they could learn how we do we engage children with books i often think i i when i visited a primary school the other day and i saw and i’m not going to say anything diary of a wimpy kid and i was like no we don’t no we’re not reading that in year six we’ve moved past we are really trying to broaden and deepen our children’s reading and i i just think that if the progression was there and i know i what i’ve been really in um enthusiastic about so many primary secondary schools are plotting that pathway out now and using things like tutor time to really engage and read aloud to peoples and our primary pupils just love that they are fully fully on board with that so it’s about come and have a look come and see the kind of books that we’re reading come and see what we’ve done with reading for pleasure at primary um i think that’s at secondary i think there is a level of how you how children become so independent um i think we can be a little bit because they’re in one class all the time in primary i think how do we develop that level of independence and i think we think our children are independent based on you know they’ve come through from reception key stage one by the time they get to year six we think they’re independent but actually what more could we do what could we do and it’d be great to see um what’s how secondary practitioners really get children to just know when to where to go what to do how to do it in a really organized way yeah tell you what i’d love some of my year 11’s to be independent but anyway i love that that was in that’s interesting because somebody said that made that comment the other day and said gosh are you sure we’re as independent as you think we are